Father hires virtual hitmen to assassinate son

Will Oremus

Want your deadbeat kid to stop playing so many video games? Here's an approach that probably won't work, but could make good fodder for a comedy about adult children living at home.

From China, via internet service provider Livedoor and video gaming blog Kotaku East, comes the tale of a father whose unemployed 23-year-old son was allegedly devoting the bulk of his waking hours to an online war game.

As the son's skills grew, he began to find that he could defeat almost all comers - until one day the young man found himself being cut down immediately every time he began the game.

After a while, he began to suspect that something was up, and grilled his virtual assassins as to why they were targeting him.

Eventually one let slip that he had been hired by the boy's father for just that purpose.

Kotaku East explains: "Unhappy with his son not finding a job, Feng decided to hire players in his son's favourite online games to hunt down Xiao Feng. It is unknown where or how Feng found the in-game assassins - every one of the players he hired were stronger and higher leveled than Xiao Feng.

"Feng's idea was that his son would get bored of playing games if he was killed every time he logged on, and that he would start putting more effort into getting a job."

The plot apparently failed, as Xiao Feng refused to stop playing the game. But if he keeps at it, maybe one day he can get a paid job as an online video game hitman.